Braving bijli crisis with crap Bollywood

You know what is the worst thing ever! You check the schedule at your local cinema, you go there and you find out that the film you want to see will be screened three hours later. I mean why have a bloody website when you are not going to update it at least 24 hours before the screening. 

S and I have been wanting to catch a film but when we went to the cinema, we found out that the film we wanted to watch will be screened hours later and the only two films starting within next 45 minutes are Rowdy Rathore and Teri Meri Kahani, as S refused to watch Rowdy Rathore ( I did not probe her deep seated loathing for Akshay but I am sure she has good reason for that) the only other option was watching Teri Meri Kahani. S thought it would be better than Rowdy Rathore – how wrong she was! I actually wanted to come back and watch the latest episode of Masterchef (yes, I am obsessed like that) but then I realized that there won’t be any electricity at home for a couple of hours. I decided to endure two and half hours of misery that passes for a Bollywood film these days for a chilly air conditioned hall (yes, I have my priorities right – mental agony must be endured for bodily comfort – that’s what one has got to do when the mercury hits 46 degree Celsius) and I think it was a good decision. 

For starters, how in the God’s name can Shahid Kapoor be an A list actor? His teeth are more crooked than my neighbour’s paan eating 80 year old grandfather, what’s the point of making all that money if you cannot invest some of it on decent dental veneers! Would have been better if he had invested money in teeth instead of a chin implant, but I digress.

There are three alternate stories where Shahid Kapoor gets to romance Priyanka Chopra and they are all so lame that I was physically cringing every time he gets amorous. In the first one, Priyanka is a Bollywood actress in the 60s who fell for a struggling musician while bonding over kachay aam! I mean it is just 1960s not dark ages where women would fall for guys who will get them 5 slices of kachay aam! And she was a film actress FFS!

The other story is set in 2012 England where two students fall for each other over BBMs, MMS, tweets and facebook updates because the girl was a student at Nottingham and the guy was going to one in Stratford-upon-Avon. Wait! Does the town of Stratford-upon-Avon even has one? No, it does not, the nearest university is Warwick but Kunal Kohli – the idiot who wrote this crapfest – was too lazy to google university towns in England and chose Stratford-upon-Avon to use some cheesy lines about Shakespeare and romance and what not! I have a feeling that the Bard must be turning in his grave like crazy over this one.

The last story was set in 1910 Pakistan – or part of Punjab that now constitute Pakistan – and the place they mentioned was “Sargodha, Lahore.” Seriously Mr. Hot shot Bollywood writer, how long does it take to google either Sargodha or Lahore to find out that they are two different cities and were two different cities even back then. I wonder who will take more offence at this, the Lahoris or the Sargodhvis that they were bundled like this! The hero, a Muslim stud muffin who was sleeping with “alhar mutiyars” (village belles for lack of better translation) of all kinds – Sikh, Hindu and Muslim – fell in love with this girl and joins the protest against evil colonizers to impress her dad. He was jailed and under some really strange law, the village girls were allowed to hang out, make out and sing dance with the inmates in their finery. Sargodha had some really messed up permissive jail laws back then, I am sure the inmates in 2012 are turning green with envy for the fun the guys had back in 1910. Even though her dad was Sikh, the heroine was referred to as "Yeh Hindu Bewa Aurat" (yes, the stud muffin was the reformist who wanted to get nikah-ofied with the Hindu widow lady)

Oh and someone needs to tell all the Bollywood wallahs that being a Muslim does not turn Punjabis ghabroo jawans from Sargodha and Lahore into paan eating, poetry spewing young men from UP who throw adaabs at every random person, use sentences like 'Hazoor tabiyat tau nasaaz naheen', 'ama apkay kya kehnay', 'miyan purzay wurzay tau theek hain na' etc. I am sure India has enough Punjabis that they would know how they behave and Punajbi men speak the same way whether they are Muslim, Christian, Sikh or Hindu, Islam does not turn them into hardcore Lucknow bwoyz! 

Did I regret watching the film? Not really, I got to sit in an air conditioned room for two and half hours – something that has become a distant dream with hourly load shedding. Hai Allah Mian ji, bijli ki adam dastiyabi hum se kya kuch karwatee hai!

PS: This post has too many exclamation marks, yes, it was deliberate.  

Women, not allowed

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Women may not visit the mosques in Pakistan but they regularly go to shrines to seek divine intervention for things spiritual and trivial. The tomb of sufi saint Shah Jamal, in Lahore, is one such shrine which attracts a lot of devotees. Women are usually allowed to go to the general area and have a separate area where they can pray, sleep or eat. However, they are forbidden to enter the room which houses the grave of the saint. Shah Jamal is no exception. The entrance to the grave in the general area have this board which says: "Entrance of women is strictly forbidden." I have seen such boards before but what I find humiliating is that now they have added the image of a young girl in pony tails with a red cross sign on it, really pushing the message that women are NOT welcome.

Sign of no entry in the general area

Sign of no entry in the segregated area for women. 

Interestingly, inside the segregated area, they have this sign which says: "This area is for women only, men are strictly forbidden to enter." However I spotted a few men who were roaming inside. A couple of them were distributing mithaee (traditional sweets) but the rest were just loitering. I guess women do not enforce the edict as vigorously as men do.

I saw a lot of really young girls in the shrine and I was wondering what kind of message the silhouette of a young girl in in pony tails with a red cross sign on would they get. Not a nice one, methinks.